Robertson Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Robertson. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
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Robertson Davies (Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1))
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A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
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Robertson Davies
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Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
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Robertson Davies
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I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.' This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.
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Dave Barry (Dave Barry Does Japan)
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Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
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Robertson Davies
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I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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You don't want to be rude but you have to be careful - there are a lot of strange people out there. (Goldman attributes this quote to Cliff Robertson.)
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William Goldman (Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood)
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Rev. Pat Robertson says that if more states legalize gay marriage, God will destroy America. He did say that afterwards, gays will come in and do a beautiful renovation.
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Conan O'Brien
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Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
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Robertson Davies
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Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.
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Robertson Davies (World of Wonders (The Deptford Trilogy, #3))
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Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
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Robertson Davies (The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies)
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To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
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Robertson Davies
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This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.
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Robertson Davies
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I spent hours flipping through the stations, watching Pat Robertson preach about society’s evils and then ask people to call him with their credit card number.
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Marilyn Manson (The Long Hard Road Out of Hell)
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Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.
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Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy)
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Si, the speed limit sign said 35. Your Goin' 55." -Sadie Robertson "Oh, that's just a suggestion.
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Si Robertson
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One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
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Robertson Davies
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There is something hugely civilised about allowing long pauses in a conversation. Very few people can stand that kind of silence.
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James Robertson (And the Land Lay Still)
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What we understand is that society must allow room for the irrational, in healthy balance with the rational.
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Robin Robertson (The Bacchae)
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Anybody can quit. Only a real champion and a person of character and strength can keep going and refuse to give up.
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Sadie Robertson (Live Original: How the Duck Commander Teen Keeps It Real and Stays True to Her Values)
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I prefer the pen. There is something elemental about the glide and flow of nib and ink on paper.
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James Robertson (The Testament of Gideon Mack)
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Living original means being confident that God made you in a really cool, unique way
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Sadie Robertson
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Our founding fathers started this country and built it on God and His Word, and this country sure would be a better place to live and raise our children if we still followed their ideals and beliefs.
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Phil Robertson (Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander)
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It was as though she was an exile from a world that saw things her way
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.
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Robertson Davies
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The lesson here is not to take Camus to the beach.
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Leo X. Robertson
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Nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity.
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Robertson Davies (High Spirits)
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A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
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Robertson Davies
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I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear.
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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What matters, in other words, isn’t what we feel but how we respond to those feelings.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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No matter what you want to do, confidence is key!
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Sadie Robertson (Live Original: How the Duck Commander Teen Keeps It Real and Stays True to Her Values)
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Hey, I'm like Aretha Franklin, I don't get no R -S -P -E -C -T around here!
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Si Robertson
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I sting like a butterfly and punch like a flea.
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Si Robertson
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To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.
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Robertson Davies
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To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.
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Robertson Davies
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We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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I'm a very controversial figure in the Christian world. I don't believe if you're gay or you have a drink or you dance, you're going to hell. I don't think that's the kind of God we have. The Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the world are scary. I want to be a Christian like Christ - loving and accepting of other people.
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Kristin Chenoweth
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I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme, I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves.
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Robertson Davies (The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks)
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Money, it is often said, does not bring happiness; it must be added, however, that it makes it possible to support unhappiness with exemplary fortitude.
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Robertson Davies (Tempest-tost (The Salterton Trilogy, #1))
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On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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God, youth is a terrible time! So much feeling and so little notion of how to handle it!
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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To learn how to die, according to the Stoics, is to unlearn how to be a slave.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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Be sure you choose what you believe and know why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you.
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Robertson Davies (The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2))
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It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid.
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Robert Gibbs
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From the moment we’re born we’re constantly dying, not only with each stage of life but also one day at a time. Our bodies are no longer the ones to which our mothers gave birth, as Marcus put it. Nobody is the same person he was yesterday. Realizing this makes it easier to let go: we can no more hold on to life than grasp the waters of a rushing stream.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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Happy happy happy
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Phil Robertson
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In this room I have picked which gun was unloaded out of ten options. And then they pulled the trigger on me. I have picked stocks that went on to skyrocket. I have picked which pencil I would shove into Ms. Robertson’s ear until she kicked me out for thinking about it.
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Kiersten White (Mind Games (Mind Games, #1))
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Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
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Robertson Davies
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All real fantasy is serious. Only faked fantasy is not serious. That is why it is so wrong to impose faked fantasy on children....
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Robertson Davies (The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2))
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If men were in charge of carrying and birthing our babies, we'd have a lot fewer people on Earth, because we'd only do it once- I can promise you that!
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Phil Robertson
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I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.
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Robertson Davies
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The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
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Robertson Davies
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Conversations and jokes together, mutual rendering of good services, the reading together of sweetly phrased books, the sharing of nonsense and mutual attentions.
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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Trust the story ... the storyteller may dissemble and deceive, the story can't: the story can only ever be itself.
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James Robertson (And the Land Lay Still)
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The egotist is all surface; underneath is a pulpy mess and a lot of self-doubt. But the egoist may be yielding and even deferential in things he doesn't consider important; in anything that touches his core he is remorseless.
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Robertson Davies (World of Wonders (The Deptford Trilogy, #3))
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Computers will have to learn that when I quote from some old author who spelled differently from the machine, the wishes of the long-dead author will have to be respected, and the machine will have to mind its manners
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Robertson Davies
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Happiness is a choiceβ€”a choice to be joyful, no matter what the circumstance.
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Sadie Robertson (Live Original: How the Duck Commander Teen Keeps It Real and Stays True to Her Values)
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have a mind so quiet, that you can hear doves whispering as they rest their wings in the rafters your silent sanctuary
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Kate Mullane Robertson
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An infant is a seed. Is it an oak seed or a cabbage seed? Who knows. All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.
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Robertson Davies (World of Wonders (The Deptford Trilogy, #3))
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My position was a common one; I wanted to do the right thing but could not help regretting the damnable expense.
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty.(...) Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone.
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Robertson Davies (What's Bred in the Bone (Cornish Trilogy, #2))
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She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command.
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Robertson Davies (Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1))
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I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.
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Robertson Davies
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Nothing is more dangerous to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.
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Robertson Davies (Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1))
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The biggest problem with melancholy is that it is more detailed than the world.
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Lisa Robertson
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There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.
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Robertson Davies
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The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to β€œneed” countless things, but he uses them all badly.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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In typically blunt fashion he told them that sheep don’t vomit up grass to show the shepherds how much they’ve eaten but rather digest their food inwardly and produce good wool and milk outwardly.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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Socrates used to say that death is like some prankster in a scary mask, dressed as a bogeyman to frighten small children. The wise man carefully removes the mask and, looking behind it, he finds nothing worth fearing.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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A standing prick hath no conscience. And if that standing prick is attached to Bruce Robertson then it hath less than no conscience. You can't afford a conscience in this life, that has become a luxury for the rich and a social ball and chain for the rest of us. Even if I wanted one, which I certainly do not, I wouldn't have the faintest idea as how to go about getting one.
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Irvine Welsh (Filth)
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So -- I confess I have been a rake at reading. I have read those things which I ought not to have read, and I have not read those things which I ought to have read, and there is no health in me -- if by health you mean an inclusive and coherent knowledge of any body of great literature. I can only protest, like all rakes in their shameful senescence, that I have had a good time.
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Robertson Davies (The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading Writing & the World of Books)
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If there is a true measure of a person's soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes. The Dalai Lama's eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope's eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson's eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don't use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else's.
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Mark Morford
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The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
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Pat Robertson
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Now is as good a time as ever to revisit the history of the Crusades, or the sorry history of partition in Kashmir, or the woes of the Chechens and Kosovars. But the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about 'the West,' to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content.
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Christopher Hitchens
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We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and he fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, beacuse it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshiped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless.
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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The women we really love are the women who complete us, who have the qualities we can borrow and so become something nearer to whole men. Just as we complete them, of course; it’s not a one-way thing. Leola and I, when romance was stripped away, were too much alike; our strengths and weaknesses were too nearly the same. Together we would have doubled our gains and our losses, but that isn’t what love is.
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Robertson Davies
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A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, as well as characteristics that seem to be charming because they are childlike, he is also a schemer, self-seeker, traitor, Judas, crook, and villain - in short, a man.
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Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy)
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Red?" I asked. "I've decided I'm going to call you Red from now on." "All right, I'll bite - no pun intended. Why?" He snickered in a very masculine way and lowered his voice. "'Cause I like the idea of the big bad wolf visiting you and Grandma.
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Linda Robertson (Vicious Circle)
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If I had my way books would not be written in English but in an exceedingly difficult secret language.... This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors...who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.
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Robertson Davies
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To instruct calls for energy, and to remain almost silent, but watchful and helpful, while students instruct themselves, calls for even greater energy. To see someone fall (which will teach him not to fall again) when a word from you would keep him on his feet but ignorant of an important danger, is one of the tasks of the teacher that calls for special energy, because holding in is more demanding than crying out.
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a super-professor. all men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character.… Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people's troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don't you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too?
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Robertson Davies (The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2))
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[M]ost people go through life a wee bit disappointed in themselves. I think we all keep a memory of a moment when we missed someone or something, when we could have gone down another path, a happier or better or just a different path. Just because they're in the past doesn't mean you can't treasure the possibilities ... maybe we put down a marker for another time. And now's the time. Now we can do whatever we want to do.
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James Robertson (And the Land Lay Still)
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Just about all men need a woman in one way or another, unless they’re very strange indeed. Tormenting you refreshes him. And you shouldn’t underestimate the gratitude all men feel for women’s beauty. Men who truly don’t like flowers are very uncommon and men who don’t respond to a beautiful woman are even more uncommon. It’s not primarily sexual; it’s a lifting of the spirits beauty gives. He’ll be in to torment you, and tease you, and enrage you, but really to have a good, refreshing look at you.
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity? Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the last election, the GOP succeeded in increasing its vote among American Jews by an estimated five percentage points. Does it propose to welcome these new adherents or sympathizers by yelling in the tones of that great Democrat bigmouth William Jennings Bryan? By insisting that evolution is 'only a theory'? By demanding biblical literalism and by proclaiming that the Messiah has already shown himself? If so, it will deserve the punishment for hubris that is already coming its way. (The punishment, in other words, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson believed had struck America on Sept. 11, 2001. How can it be that such grotesque characters, calling down divine revenge on the workers in the World Trade Center, are allowed a respectful hearing, or a hearing at all, among patriotic Republicans?). [. . . And Why I'm Most Certainly Not! -- The Wall Street Journal, Commentary Column. May 5, 2005]
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Christopher Hitchens
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But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, the next you're trading the whole apparatus in for Sunday superstores. Praise the Lord and thrash the bairns. Ask and ye shall have the door shut in your face. Blessed are they that shop on the Sabbath, for they shall get the best bargains. Oh yes, this is a very fine country.
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James W. Robertson
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According to Stoic philosophy, when we assign intrinsic values like β€œgood” or β€œbad” to external events, we’re behaving irrationally and even exhibiting a form of self-deception. When we call something a β€œcatastrophe,” for instance, we go beyond the bare facts and start distorting events and deceiving ourselves. Moreover, the Stoics consider lying a form of impietyβ€”when a man lies, he alienates himself from Nature.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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... 'But Gold was not all. The other kings bring Frank Innocence and Mirth.' | Darcourt was startled, then delighted. 'That is very fine, Yerko; is it your own?' | 'No, it is in the story. I saw it in New York. The kings say, We bring you Gold, Frank Innocence, and Mirth.' | 'Sancta simplicitas,' said Darcourt, raising his eyes to mine. 'If only there were more Mirth in the message He has left to us. We miss it sadly, in the world we have made. And Frank Innocence. Oh, Yerko, you dear man.' ...
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Robertson Davies (The Rebel Angels (The Cornish Trilogy, #1))
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I'm standing under a sign that says, 'Budweiser is king of beers,' and everybody's got their beers here today," I told them. "But I'm here to talk about the King of Kings. I know I might look like a preacher, but I'm not. Here's how you can tell whether someone's a preacher or not: if he gets up and says some words and passes a hat for you to put money in, that's a preacher. This is free. This if free of charge, which proves I'm not a preacher.
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Phil Robertson (Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander)
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Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.
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Robertson Davies (Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1))
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J. Robertson McQuilkin...was once approached by an elderly lady facing the trials of old age. Her body was in decline, her beauty being replaced by thinning hair, wrinkles and skin discoloration. She could no longer do the things she once could, and she felt herself to be a burden on others. β€œRobertson, why does God let us get old and weak? Why must I hurt so?” she asked. After a few moments’ thought McQuilkin replied, β€œI think God has planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical. But the strength and beauty of age is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so we’ll be sure to concentrate on the strength and beauty which is forever. It makes us more eager to leave behind the temporary, deteriorating part of us and be truly homesick for our eternal home. If we stayed young and strong and beautiful, we might never want to leave!
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Philip Yancey (Where Is God When It Hurts?)
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The older I grow the less Christ's teaching says to me. I am sometimes very conscious that I am following the path of a leader who died when He was less than half as old as I am now. I see and feel things He never saw or felt. I know things He seems never to have known. Everybody wants a Christ for himself and those who think like him. Very well, am I at fault for wanting a Christ who will show me how to be an old man? All Christ's teaching is put forward with the dogmatism, the certainty, and the strength of youth: I need something that takes account of the accretion of experience, the sense of paradox and ambiguity that comes with years!
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.
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Christopher Hitchens (Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left)
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Who are you? Where do you fit into poetry and myth? Do you know who I think you are, Ramsay? I think you are Fifth Business. You don't know what that is? Well, in opera in a permanent company of the kind we keep up in Europe you must have a prima donna -- always a soprano, always the heroine, often a fool; and a tenor who always plays the lover to her; and then you must have a contralto, who is a rival to the soprano, or a sorceress or something; and a basso, who is the villain or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor. "So far, so good. But you cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex. And you must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody's death if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without Fifth Business! It is not spectacular, but it is a good line of work, I can tell you, and those who play it sometimes have a career that outlasts the golden voices. Are you Fifth Business? You had better find out.
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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I had become wiser, I tried to find out what irony really is, and discovered that some ancient writer on poetry had spoken of β€œIronia, which we call the drye mock.” And I cannot think of a better term for it: The drye mock. Not sarcasm, which is like vinegar, or cynicism, which is so often the voice of disappointed idealism, but a delicate casting of cool and illuminating light on life, and thus an enlargement. The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit’s desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.
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Robertson Davies (The Cunning Man (Toronto Trilogy, #2))
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Schoolmastering kept me busy by day and part of each night. I was an assistant housemaster, with a fine big room under the eaves of the main building, and a wretched kennel of a bedroom, and rights in a bathroom used by two or three other resident masters. I taught all day, but my wooden leg mercifully spared me from the nuisance of having to supervise sports after school. There were exercises to mark every night, but I soon gained a professional attitude towards these woeful explorations of the caves of ignorance and did not let them depress me. I liked the company of most of my colleagues, who were about equally divided among good men who were good teachers, awful men who were awful teachers, and the grotesques and misfits who drift into teaching and are so often the most educative influences a boy meets in school. If a boy can't have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to cope with; don't just give him a bad, dull teacher. This is where the private schools score over state-run schools; they can accommodate a few cultured madmen on the staff without having to offer explanations.
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Robertson Davies (Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1))
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You can start training yourself in this Stoic practice of objective representation right now by writing down a description of an upsetting or problematic event in plain language. Phrase things as accurately as possible and view them from a more philosophical perspective, with studied indifference. Once you’ve mastered this art, take it a step further by following the example of Paconius Agrippinus and look for positive opportunities. Write how you could exercise strength of character and cope wisely with the situation. Ask yourself how someone you admire might cope with the same situation or what that person might advise you to do. Treat the event like a sparring partner in the gym, giving you an opportunity to strengthen your emotional resilience and coping skills. You might want to read your script aloud and review it several times or compose several versions until you’re satisfied it’s helped you change how you feel about events.
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Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
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New Rule: Now that liberals have taken back the word "liberal," they also have to take back the word "elite." By now you've heard the constant right-wing attacks on the "elite media," and the "liberal elite." Who may or may not be part of the "Washington elite." A subset of the "East Coast elite." Which is overly influenced by the "Hollywood elite." So basically, unless you're a shit-kicker from Kansas, you're with the terrorists. If you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being "elite," you'd be almost as wasted as Rush Limbaugh. I don't get it: In other fields--outside of government--elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I'd like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad--the elite aren't down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-Brains. Which is fine, except that whenever there's a Bush administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, "Where are they getting these screwups from?" Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I'm not kidding. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because she's smack in the middle of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She's thirty-three, and though she never even worked as a prosecutor, was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all ninety-three U.S. attorneys. How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College--you know, home of the "Fighting Christies"--and then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school. Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause "earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor," has a law school. And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years, and you have to read only one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix. Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist diploma mill work in the Bush administration? On hundred fifty. And you wonder why things are so messed up? We're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college founded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House? In two hundred years, we've gone from "we the people" to "up with people." From the best and brightest to dumb and dumber. And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school? The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by elites. It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling hired to keep her ass out of jail went to a real law school.
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Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)